Grand Theft Auto V at the time of its release in 2013 was labeled as one of, if not the most expensive and most ambitious video game project of all time. With the constant support for its online variant known as GTA Online, it remained relevant for over 10 years now. It was a project that broke all records at the time, with the revenue passing over $1 billion within just days. However, with its release on the PC platform dating back to 2015, this review for the game has long been overdue - it shall cover only singleplayer portion of the game. The multiplayer portion may or may not be briefly mentioned.

Set in the sunny California, the game revises the state of San Andreas in a new, more "modern" approach. Unlike 2004's GTA San Andreas, GTA5 features only one big city - Los Santos. While the San Andreas gangsters such as Grove Street and Ballas do make a return in this release, the game focuses a bit more on the satire of 2010s California and the way life look(ed) like at the time of its setting. This time around, unlike previous entries in the franchise, there's not one, but three protagonists, each having their own backgrounds, motivations, and personalities: Michael - a retired criminal struggling with family life; Franklin - a young Grove Street member trying to escape the constant violence of what spiritually looks like the sequel of the story of San Andreas; and Trevor - a quite unpredictable psychopath with a strong passion for destruction.

Their connections on the surface looks shallow, but having replayed the story again, I often found myself noticing some new bits and pieces which had been overlooked in the past. The story, being far from perfect and even far from the beauty of Red Dead Redemption 2, through the feature of three protagonists, offers a fresh new outlook on how the open world genre can look and be implemented in the future. It unfolds through a series of different heists and missions showcasing Rockstar’s usual blend of action and drama. Initially despised by many, the dynamic link between the three protagonists is one of the game’s stronger aspects. It allowed for different perspectives to each mission and scenario the group found itself in, resulting in some cool and unique gameplay moments. While the plot leans heavily into Hollywood-like crime narratives, it still somehow manages to offer moments of depth and character development.

Set in a fictional version of 2010s Los Angeles, as one of the official trailers said, the world of Los Santos is beautiful and massive - covering mountains and oceans, urban decay and untouched wilderness, beaches and backwoods, expensive stores, greed and human hypocrisy. It's packed with a lot of things to do at any given point: cars to customize and race with, planes to fly, clothes to buy, sports to play, oceans to dive, strangers to meet and interact with, animals to hunt or be hunted by, the stock market and real estate investment.

One of the game's innovations is the ability to switch between characters at almost any time - during and outside of missions. Each character has a unique special ability: Michael can slow down time in combat, Franklin can do the same while driving, and Trevor can enter a berserk mode that increases damage resistance and melee power. At the center of the game are its heists, requiring players to plan and execute robberies with different approaches and crew members. Given this ability to switch strategies adds replayability value. However, often I found myself being limited with what I can do during a mission and some missions can fail for the stupidest reasons.

Rockstar has put some more effort into the shooting mechanics in this franchise entry. Driving has been made more arcadey, unlike GTA4, to the delight of some and to the horror of others. Unfortunately, as fun as the car chases can sometimes be, the police AI still suffers from the inability to locate the player. In certain scenarios, the police NPCs are destined to find you, in others you can pass by without much trouble.

In March of 2025, the PC release received an upgrade which added raytracing support and a few other improvements. Unfortunately, this comes at a performance cost, so having the game running on Ultra settings with raytracing on will require some pretty decent hardware (an RTX 3060 12GB was unable to run the game on over 45fps even though the GPU was half utilized). Not as cinematic as the world of Red Dead Redemption 2, but even 10 years after its PC release, Los Santos still looks beautiful. Rockstar's known attention to detail can be seen during gameplay more often than not and the world feels alive.

Character models and facial animations are often decent, especially compared to what the modern AAA industry tends to provide. With raytracing disabled, the game's optimization makes it run smoothly, unlike what was the case with GTA4. The fact that Rockstar learnt from its GTA4 mistakes and managed to optimize the game to run properly on 4GB of RAM back in 2015 is top notch. Naturally, the PC version offers the best visuals and customization options. And not to mention the modding that has been a core part of the franchise for over 2 decades now.

GTA 5’s radio stations are diverse and its soundtrack is lovely. There's a mix of licensed tracks which span throughout the different radio stations - from the gang oriented ones to modern pop music. The radio stations have always been known to offer hilarious talk shows that add to the immersion and GTA5 is no different. The voice acting is proper AAA quality with the performances from the main cast stealing the show.

GTA 5 is definitely to this day one of the best open-world games available. Even with some classic limitations such as cars (especially taxis) spawning behind the player when there was nothing 2 seconds ago, GTA5's single-player mode certainly feels alive. Minor AI inconsistencies and the stupid police system are small, but expect and very well known flaws in what is otherwise a great title.

Unfortunately, GTA5, too, has been a victim the corporal greed of today where certain mods cease to exist due to Take Two and Rockstar's terrible community support. The multiplayer portion of the game has been turned into a money milking machine which may not see its inevitable death even after the release of GTA6 in the future.

Whether you enjoy storytelling, exploration, or chaotic mayhem, GTA 5 delivers an experience that remains unparalleled by most even after over a decade.

The process of milking existing franchises is something that has been haunting and destroying all entertainment industries for about a decade now. The most notable victim of such ideas and actions, especially in recent memory, has been the video games industry. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the stagnation of creativity and lack of braveness to come up with new concepts and IPs by the corporal giants such as Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft. However, during these troublesome times, every once in a while, fate reaches out and extends its hands to gamers in form of indie games.

Undertale, Terraria, Hotline Miami, Cuphead and many, many more, are just some examples that have come out in the last decade, turned the Internet and the industry around, sparkling a lot of copycats and driving the attention of the world of video games towards them. One more such example has become Lethal Company - a multiplayer horror video game made by a single developer where your goal is simple - find and collect random space trash which can be sold to the imaginative megacorporation named "The Company".


In Lethal Company, you, the player, assume the role of an intern in an unnamed company that sends you to various different, procedurally generated and haunted planets labeled as moons. You're given 3 in-game days, each lasting about 10 minutes total, and your and your teammates' (up to 3 by default, more if modded) goal is to scatter around the map and its facility and find space trash called Scrap Items, collect and bring them back to the ship; these include, but are not limited to, random toys like the Rubik's Cube, candy, mugs, cups, lamps and even gold bars.

Once the 3 in-game days have passed, the ship flies to The Company's headquarters - a moon named Gordion. The Company will purchase essentially any item you managed to find in exchange for a paycheck. Each item has its own value which essentially defines the price; some masks are valued more, others less. The requirement is to meet the profit quota after every sale, otherwise you and your crew are getting fired and blasted into the void of space.

Some items can only be obtained by killing certain enemies, others can be purchased at the headquarters - some can help to fight off certain enemies (shovels) while others are utilities that can help navigating the facilities (flashlights, Walkie-talkies). Communication is sometimes nearly impossible due to its proximity chat implementation, but that in itself is one of the reasons for the game's success.

Each map has one or multiple entrances placed in various outdoors areas, entering which leads to the indoors facility whose layout is procedurally generated. There's landmines, spike traps and turrets that spawn in random places in the facility and they can be monitored and temporarily turned off in the ship through the ship's computer console.


On the surface, it appears as if this is just another game with no backstory except the simple premise of collecting scrap items. However, its unsetlling lore can be explored through the game's logs, written by an unknown (likely former) coworker Sigurd, starting in the alleged year of 1968. All of the logs can be accessed via the ship's computer and they contain some brief and in some ways, "mysterious" info about The Company. The monster behind the reception wall on The Company's headquarters planet is named Jeb and it seems to feed on the trash items that you and your crewmates manage to find. For as long as the quota is met, Jeb and The Company are satisfied with you. The lore seems to imply that the idea behind feeding Jeb is to keep the monster behind the walls tame.

According to the ship's computer, the game's first day is set in the year 2532, dating over 500 years after Sigurd's first log. The computer is running on an operating system written by Halden Electronics and licensed for the duration between 2084 and 2108. The fact that the software's license expired a long time ago, The Company is likely running a pirated version of the OS or the original development team of the OS has gone defunct. The famine the universe has been going through in the last 500 years means that both scenarios are likely. The (current) final log was written in October 1968 by another crewmate Desmond, which heavily suggests Sigurd's passing and nothing has been known of since.

Lethal Company's cast of enemies and monsters is diverse. From the unkillable Resident Evil reanimated mannequins known as Coil-heads, butlers trying to kill you when nobody is watching, all the way to eyeless dogs with great hearing and robots that shoot rockets, Lethal Company is packed with all sorts of monsters and enemies, some of which will even fight each other, making the ecosystem more believable.


Sadly, the game suffers from being developed on the modern day Unity engine, which means that even though the textures are "beneath the level" of Grand Theft Auto IV, its system requirements can be high at times and if not met, there will be suffering FPS drops in certain areas on various hardware, from the GTX 1060 6GB all the way up to RTX 3060. The game does, however, aim for such an art style, which is fine when the FPS counter does not drop to 30 on modern hardware.

The game's audio is really great and very often makes the atmosphere as unsettling as it should be in a horror game. Every enemy is fairly distinct and hearing the Jester playing "Pop Goes the Weasel" can mean one thing - it's time to find the exit and run outside. Unfortunately, there are cases where one would try to search for lower volume mods due to how loud some enemies such as the Old Birds when they're triggered can be. The proximity chat feature is what truly makes the game great in that regard, though, as hearing a friend scream or laugh in the far distance without knowing how to quickly navigate there to witness the situation can provide for some fun or fearsome moments, depending on the situation.


All in all, Lethal Company is a game with great concepts that relies on its playerbase to drive the fun and that is what makes it amongst some of the best in recent memory. While visibly still in early access, the initial starting point is something that can and should be improved upon as it opens paths for future content, lore, more characters and features. While having a cleverly designed AI system, it can sometimes be buggy (likely due to the procedural generation of the facility layouts) in certain areas. It is short on the optimization and (some) audio side, but with a little bit more effort, these issues can be history.

For its price, it can offer some good hours of fun with people on your friends list.